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Monday, 9 June 2014

Just about 10 years
ago, after an expletive laden meeting where my manager displayed a level of
unreasonableness I had never ever encountered in all my working life, I decided
I was done with that job.

I walked out of
that meeting and put myself on the job market, within a week I had an offer and
I submitted my resignation letter.

To spite me, he
said, he was expecting my resignation and that anyone could do my job, with
that he started a campaign of undermining me and frustrating my efforts at a
smooth exit. It took writing a letter to the senior management to get him off
my back and stop his calumnious activity.

Why this stress?

I loved my job but I could not work under the circumstances I was made to work, especially by the time we got to that rotten meeting. Of all the managers I have ever worked for in my 28-year career, he takes the prize for the worst ever sociopathic person I ever had to call a manager, I have avoided every prospect of ever meeting him again since I walked out of that job.

However, before I
got to write that letter to senior management, I found myself under pressure,
extremely stressed, having sleepless nights and seemingly out of control of the
situation.

Wake up to reality

I came to myself
one day wondering how it could be that I was moving on to another job, about to
return to school for a postgraduate degree, just returned from a two-week
holiday and yet be at a point where my health was threatened by conditions at
work. It was so bad that I took a week off sick just trying to get it together.

That situation was
unnecessary, untenable and unreasonable, it was the point where I decided no
job was worth dying for and that if I could not control the circumstances in
which I found myself, the very least I could do for my sanity was to leave.

Sadly for Komla Dumor

Which brings me to
the very sad story of the passing of Komla Dumor in January 2014. I have for long wanted to write about this, but felt the issue was almost too raw to tackle at that time, I did however post some tweets on the broader issue of personal welfare at work.

Komla Dumor was a
distinguished, accomplished journalist and presenter who worked for the BBC, it
was always a pleasure to watch the programmes he anchored. A few days ago, a
friend on Twitter remembered him, and opined that he would have been packing his
bags to travel to Brazil to cover the World Cup, alas, that was not to be.

A few days after
his death from a cardiac arrest at the age of 41, some stories emerged about
the stress and the racism Komla suffered at the BBC. Worse still were the palpable
warning signs his body was giving him that he apparently put to one side until
it culminated in his death.

Ever the
professional, Komla did not once show the problems he was having as he appeared
on television, yet this issue was eating away at his very being that it is
rather unfortunate that he never got to walk away from it, for his health, his welfare
and his well-being.

What the story in
The New Statesman revealed was that Komla Dumor collapsed in a BBC studio and
almost suffered a stroke 7 months before his death, which should have been the
loudest ringing alarm bells to him to slow down, to rethink, to review, to reconsider or probably to resign.

The situation and warning signs

In a message he
purportedly sent to a friend, he wrote of his high blood pressure, long hours at
work; especially for a man with a young family, he was exhausted, aching, mentally
and emotionally drained and all this seemed to be related to – ‘having
“to endure lots of jealousy driven vicious insults, backstabbing from petty
people” at the BBC.’

How did Komla Dumor
deal with this? In his own words, “I kept going, I smiled for the camera, I volunteered for extra shifts, I showed respect to my colleagues from
directors to the security guards … I
remain silent in my personal strife and misery. I kept smiling and pushing on to present better and to engage with
my audience and increase my following, long days and frustrating times, but I kept going.”

Only one thing is evident from that last two paragraphs, this job was killing him and what did he do? He threw himself more into it hoping it would fight for his validation, his respect, his survival, his recognition and more.

At what cost?

There is no doubt
that his boss, the head of television recognised what a star performer Komla
Dumor was, as “he said Komla we have
decided to make you the anchor presenter for our coverage of the World Cup in
Brazil.” That was not to be, Komla died in January, and the World Cup
starts in 4 days’ time.

Maybe for not
talking about what he was experiencing, he never got the therapy and needed
support necessary to stabilise his health and save his life.

The salutary lesson is best left unspoken, to have to write of the death of someone younger, but there is much to learn from this about any situation with regards to what fights you should fight and the ones you should walk away from, not out of cowardice or weakness but out of knowing exactly what your body is saying to you and for self-preservation.

Beyond this, is not
ignoring the symptoms, the circumstances and the burdens that accompany the dynamics
at work where your health could be at risk. The fear of loss of status and livelihood
when the loss of health and possibly the loss of life is impending is one to
face boldly, for with life and health is the hope to face another day and
challenge.

I was a fool

I look back at my
own situation just five years ago too when for a year of observation from the
chef de reception where I went for holidays in Gran Canaria, he noticed that it
appeared my health was failing, yet I ignored all the issues, bounding along as
if I had no care in the world.

I was more tired,
sometimes particularly weak whilst the blotches that appeared on the soles of my feet, I
dismissed as athlete’s
foot that never healed. I then had shingles
and soon that disappeared without any long-term postherpetic
neuralgia, I hoped for a miracle cure that never came before I succumbed to
the last resort of medicine, a resort that I should have taken probably over 12 months before. By the way, Javier, the
chef de reception, predeceased me and he was younger.

I was dying

When I was finally
diagnosed, I had just 5 weeks to live, if I did not respond to treatment. It
was a kind of foolishness that was part of my cultural exposure in Nigeria
where we never talked about how we felt whilst we prayed fervently visiting
faith healers hoping for instant Shamanist cures after some ritual of the mind
and the body – I could have died, it was that close.

In the process, I
lost everything I hoped to keep through not addressing an existential health
issue; my status, my job, my home of 10 years, my viability for the market,
things I had acquired over 20 years given away without any return of value, it
took me rock bottom, but I still had my life and my hopes.

Well…

It has been
difficult, but the experience has become a story, one told in many blogs, and whilst
I would never want to relive the experience, I do not regret that what I have
learnt would probably make me a better man.

Do not play with your health, and no job is worth losing your health or your life for.

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I have many stories to tell, I am English of Nigerian parentage, I lived in the Netherlands for 12 years, returned to the UK recently but still have wander lust - the rest is somewhere online, most likely in on blogs.